Analyzing Tucker Carlson's Mind

western civilization is our birthright it's a war superior to the culture that these immigrants are bringing tucker carlson has the highest ratings for any cable television news show in history is probably the most influential conservative in the world and has been touted as a potential republican presidential candidate he's known for an acerbic wit a biting sarcasm this gormless expression a top official in the leadership in the northern district of florida [Music] and for being the lead spokesman for a new brand of populist politics trumpism without trump after reading his book and watching endless tucker carlson tonight segments i found that tucker has a very specific view on the world some of which i actually surprisingly agree with but under the surface and often bubbling above explicitly and especially in the worrying last few pages of his 2018 book ship of fools is a conspiratorial and paranoid world view and a skepticism about the merits of democracy itself tucker embodies the fox news formula as it's developed over its 26 years on air it's that the viewer you are under siege night after night segment after segment facebook and youtube video after facebook and youtube video that the elites corrupt lazy greedy and incompetent are not just out to get you but that it's a concerted effort a conspiracy an evil plan this is a formula i began to explore in the last video as nicolas confessor at the new york times notes with tucker quote virtually any piece of news can be steered back to themes of elite corruption conspiracy and censorship there are some alarming themes that emerge around what tucker who has been floated as a potential republican presidential candidate thinks should be done about it when trump's popularity began to fool and the tide started turning against him producers at tucker carlson tonight on air every night from 8 00 9 decided on a new focus a new approach trumpism without trump it was a way to distinguish carlson from the president for him to be his own person to avoid being a lap dog for a president known for his gaffes for his lack of seriousness and to avoid having to constantly apologize for him and defend him on air so we'll look at tucker's world view what he said about topics like immigration and the january 6 capital riots how the conspiratorial style here dots was analyzed by a historian 60 years ago and what most alarmingly tucker seems to believe about the future of democracy carlson started his career as a pro-capitalist pro-immigration classical libertarian thinker but along with many of his contemporaries on the right he drifted slowly towards a nationalist populist world view concerned with the excesses of capitalism and most notably the dangers of unbridled immigration along with friend neil patel he started the online publication the daily cooler in 2010. former editor at the journal jim antel told the new york times that quote when the coolest started most smart young conservatives were libertarian within a few years after that a lot of them were populist nationalist types one former employee said that immigration was always the most animating thing it wasn't even close several employees were found to have used pseudonyms to write for white nationalist websites almost a dozen were discovered making racist posts elsewhere online one editor also wrote for the white nationalist richard spencer's radix journal and cooler employees have been snapped in photos with white nationalists like matthew heimbach and one was a speaker at the 2017 charlottesville rally where white nationalists marched with flanks and torches carlson said that the daily caller was for quote people who are distrustful of conventional news organizations he had joined fox the previous year in 2009 began tucker carlson tonight in 2016 and then left the daily caller entirely in 2020 but what are his politics carlson outlines his theory of american politics in his 2018 book ship of fools how a selfish ruling class is bringing america to the brink of revolution america he says in it has changed he points out that there's been a decline in the size and wealth of the middle class from 60 percent of the national income in 1970 to 43 in 2015 with the share of wealth going to the rich rising from 29 to 50 percent he sees inequality as a big problem he writes the rich and i reside on the other side of a rope line from everyone else they stand in their own queues at the airport sleep on their own restricted floors in hotels they watch sporting events from sky boxes while everyone else sits in the stands they go to different schools they eat different food they ski on private mountains with people very much like themselves suddenly america has a new class system and he says republicans ignore this but in a break from the past democrats now ignore this too he says that now both republicans and democrats are parties of the rich he told the atlantic if you're starting to suspect that the conservative establishment doesn't really represent your interests there's a reason for that they're every bit as corrupt as you think they are what's new though is that liberals defend crony capitalism too he points to amazon's jeff bezos actually supporting hillary as did 8 out of 10 of the most affluent counties in america and most of the wealthy employees of silicon valley giants like facebook google apple amazon and microsoft who all donated to hillary over trump by 60 to 1. he says that now democrats like talking about identity politics climate change and abortion rather than inequality and unequal societies he writes tend to collapse he's called it vulture capitalism now there's a lot in this diagnosis to agree with the next question to ask though is why this happened instead tucker begins his descent into paranoia and conspiracy carlson says that one of the problems with this left-right convergence is that the elites broadly accept mass immigration why because an influx of cheap labor keeps wages low and boosts their profits he writes for decades ever increasing immigration has been the rule in the united states endorsed by both political parties in 1970 less than five percent of americans population were immigrants by 2018 that number had risen to nearly 14 percent and i'm not exactly sure how he's defining immigrants here immigration for politicians and business people is a win-win democrats know that immigrants will vote for them and republicans and business owners know that immigrants will work for less money than what he describes as legacy americans he writes both parties looking for votes for it big business which is always looking for cheaper labor is for it but it turns out the average person isn't for it immigration he says has two problems i'll categorize them loosely into economic problems and cultural problems the economic argument is that an influx of immigrants willing to work for less pushes down the wages of working-class americans even progressives he argues used to be more critical of immigration for this reason he writes in 1885 congress passed a measure that forbade companies from hiring foreign contract workers two years later the government tightened vetting of immigrants at ports of entry in 1888 congress mandated fines for companies that hired illegals bill clinton a democrat had argued for a stricter immigration policy border patrols cracking down on employees who hire illegal immigrants and so on tucker says as late as 2006 there were still new york times columnists willing to concede that immigration came with a downside immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants economist paul krugman wrote that year in the paper we'll need to reduce the inflow of low-skill immigrants okay so immigration depresses wages for ordinary americans the elites like it because that boosts profits that's the economic case he makes and we'll return to it shortly but he also argues that immigration has its cultural problems immigration at this scale he says destabilizes our society nothing looks the same neighborhoods are different customs and language are different too he writes human beings aren't wired for that they can't digest change at this pace it disorients them over time it makes even the most open-minded people jumpy and hostile and suspicious of one another it encourages tribalism he continues why should a country with no shared language ethnicity religion culture or history remain a country countries don't hang together simply because they need a reason what's ours now there are some perfectly honest debates that can be had around the merits and issues immigration present in an increasingly fast-moving and globalized world and there's plenty of evidence that can be called upon in those debates so before we ask why carlson has the view of the world that he does what motivates it we need to look at his very selective reasoning his confirmation bias how his argument that immigration is a central problem is based on a very narrow to say the least understanding of the studies in the book tucker cites two pieces of evidence that immigration drives down wages neither of which are actually footnoted or cited or in a bibliography but fine it's not that kind of book one reference is from a new york times story about storm lake iowa he writes in the spring of 2017 the nyt ran a story about a town in northwest iowa called storm lake tyson foods operates slaughterhouses and meat packing plants in storm lake and over the years thousands of workers from asia and latin america have moved there to work in them not surprisingly the flood of cheap labor destroyed the local labor union and depressed wages first i can find no studies zero or any evidence for the claim that immigration depressed wages in storm lake the original article does acknowledge that wages are stagnant there but the claim it actually makes is that quote mr smith remembers that it wasn't the arrival of foreign workers that initially drove down wages but the plant owners or take this quote faced with competition from new companies that had developed a faster more efficient method of boxing beef and selling it to supermarket chains and fast food outlets high grade a food products company in 1981 asked its workers to take a pay cut of three dollars an hour when they refused the plant closed this was before immigrants from south east asia and south america began arriving in storm lake in the mid 1980s carlson also ignores the evidence that immigration is keeping the town alive and even growing he also says that in storm lake mass immigration had a dramatic effect on violent crime rates which are 56 percent higher than in the rest of the state although he cites no evidence for this and i can't find this figure with a google search although who knows might be true but this is beside the points and precisely the point at the same time it's very odd that for someone who's so animated by the topic of immigration but he relies so much on this single tag and cites no real evidence there are thousands of academic studies at least on immigration on wages and crime for example this meta-analysis of 51 studies between 1994 and 2014 found that immigration actually reduces crime in fact the literature seems quite clear on this point as many papers in google scholar show like this study from 2009 night immigration reduces crime an emerging scholarly consensus it concludes quote contrary to the predictions of classic criminological theories and popular stereotypes immigration generally does not increase crime and often suppresses it so yes studies are better than anecdotes from a single tang tucker let's look at wages again he cites one study in an entire book from 1980. he says that in the past nobody doubted that an influx of refugees would harm american workers one study conducted after the mariel boat lift of 1980 found that americans with lower education levels in miami saw their wages fall by 37 after the cuban refugees arrived whoa 37 percent that's a lot right i wonder if this is typical and not a selective reading of the evidence and cherry picking based on the single piece of data that backs up pre-selected world view the first studies on the mario boatlift a mass migration of around 125 000 cubans to florida in 1980 concluded that the effect on wages was negligible or nothing at all one 1990 study for example concluded that an analysis of wages of non-cuban workers in miami over the 1979-85 period reveals virtually no effect of the mariel influx but there was an influential paper in 2017 that quote reappraised the boat lift it argued that quote this analysis overturns the prior finding that the mariel boatlift did not affect miami's wage structure the wage of high school dropouts in miami dropped dramatically by 10 to 30 percent okay fine but first of all that's not the 37 figure that tucker suggests but 10 to 30 percent and again i can't find this 37 figure but this study too has been called into question another study concludes that as a whole the evidence from refugee waves reinforces the existing consensus that the impact of immigration on average native-born workers is small and fails to substantiate claims of large detrimental impacts on workers with less than high school education okay but again this is one single event and it's a bit of a unique case with a unique set of circumstances and it's the worst case that carlson could find the only one that seems to back up his wider world view what do the other studies show does immigration depress wages okay so i've spent some time looking into this and if you're interested in a more in-depth video on this topic then let me know in the comments because it's something that maybe i'd like to do but it seems like the consensus in the literature is that yes immigration can depress wages but by an almost insignificant amount that also tends to ignore the positive effect immigration can have on economic growth in the long term in an area for example this paper finds that in the uk an inflow of immigrants the size of one percent of the population that's 670 000 immigrants so a lot can lead to a 0.6 decline in the wages of the lowest paid but an increase in the wages of higher paid workers or take this 2016 report migrant intake into australia it found that quote the evidence generally indicates that australians wages are not adversely affected by immigration on average or this analysis of 12 other studies found quite a none to small impact on earnings and unemployment level of lower wage earners another review of the studies concludes that quite decades of research have provided little support for the claim that immigrants depress wages by competing with native workers so that's seven studies i've cited one a study of 12 other studies in a few minutes while carlson cites one study and one anecdote in an entire book and choosing that one study because it has the most dramatic figure is more than just motivated reasoning it's dishonest misleading it's actually manipulative i think of course blaming immigration for low wages is easier for a conservative than maybe suggesting that union busting and anti-labor laws and low minimum wages and poor education to blame he also selects and exaggerates stories about the cultural implications of immigration he writes go to lol massachusetts or lewiston maine which by the way is about an hour from where he lives or any place where large numbers of immigrants have been moved into a poor community and it hasn't become richer it's become poorer that's real that's not real at all actually tucker as one study from a bipartisan think tank the new american economy concluded when nearly a thousand somali refugees began relocating to lewiston in 2001 many people worried that the new immigrant population would be an undue burden on the city services and finances 15 years later the opposite has proven true new businesses a growing local economy a declining crime rate and a younger more diverse population are all playing a significant role in lewiston's economic and cultural renaissance and another study on lao found that immigrants in the city had more spending power than the average household took less in social security benefits and medicaid and medicare than the average household contributed 119 million dollars in federal taxes and accounted for a whopping 90 percent of the city's population growth carlson also writes that quote honor killings too and our feature of american life in july 2008 a pakistani man living in the suburbs of atlanta strangled his 25 year old daughter troubling of course but citing a single murder in a population of 3.5 million american muslims is again intellectually dishonest stupid in fact and probably not a wise tactic when what he calls native or legacy americans sorry natives have been responsible for at least 300 mass shootings already this year he's also suggested that immigrants are dirty claiming that one street was covered with human feces which turned out to be false it was one child who couldn't get to the toilet in time so again the cultural critique he makes is full of emissions confirmation bias selective reasoning and stereotyping that added up amounts to an intellectual dishonesty and a warped world view that if not adopted from a careful study of the evidence must come from somewhere else and this somewhere else is where we start to see a very paranoid mind before we move on to some of the talking points that carlson has promoted on tucker carlson tonight on fox news i want to talk about the historian richard hofstadter's 1964 essay the paranoid style in american politics we'll then return to see how it says a lot about tucker's repeated suggestions of shady plans and corruption and his hyperbole and exaggeration and hysteria and paranoia his book as we'll see also has a very troubling conclusion hofstadter argued that there was a history of paranoia at the heart of american politics he wrote in the influential essay the central image is that of a vast and sinister conspiracy a gigantic and yet subtle machinery of influence set in motion to undermine and destroy a way of life hofstadter calls it the paranoid style because quote no other word adequately evokes the qualities of heated exaggeration suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy that i have in mind as we'll see carlson is paranoid about the fbi about black south africans about an elite or immigrant plan called the great replacement about climate change then as hofstadter points out paranoia is a mental disorder characterized by quote systematized delusions of persecution a fear of a widespread conspiracy sometimes carlson only hints at it for example in the book he says elites support immigration not out of a moral concern for welfare or anything like that and not even to keep wages low for national economic purposes but because they want to keep nannies affordable he writes for the affluent immigration has few costs and many upsides low skilled immigrants don't compete in upscale job markets not many recent arrivals from el salvador are becoming lawyers or green energy lobbyists an awful lot of them are becoming housekeepers mass immigration makes household help affordable that's one of the main reasons elites support it really that's one of the main reasons well this is just the tip of the iceberg hofstadter argues that throughout america's modern history commentators have been paranoid about jesuits or freemasons international capitalists international jews or communists and the essay highlights a few of these conspiracy theories for example panic about the illuminati was common in the late 18th century one 1797 book was called proofs of a conspiracy against all the religions and governments of europe carried on in the secret meetings of freemasons illuminati and reading societies another was a fear that the catholic church was planning to infiltrate control and overthrow the us government in 1855 a texas newspaper said that it's a notorious fact that the monarchs of europe and the pope of rome are at this very moment plotting our destruction another 1773 book could warned of the dangers of a quote triple conspiracy of anti-christians freemasons and illuminati to destroy religion and order in the early 19th century there was a trend of fears of a conspiracy in the catholic church and jesuit church to take over america one book warned that jesuits are prowling about all parts of the united states in every possible disguise expressly to ascertain the advantageous situations and modes to disseminate potpourri there was also a theory that the market crash of 1893 was intentionally started by a catholic run on the banks in the 20th century the paranoid style became about the government being infiltrated by communists and a whole country infiltrated with quite a network of communist agents just as in the old days it was infiltrated by jesuit agents so that the whole apparatus of education religion the press and the mass media are engaged in a common effort to paralyze the resistance of loyal americans during the red scare for example senator mccarthy said that communists in high government were quite a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of man the conspiracy of infamy so black that when it's finally exposed its principles shall be forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men the influential businessman and anti-communist robert welch jr of the john birch society he claimed that in the 50s communists had taken over the supreme court and were winning the struggle to control quite the press the pulpit the radio and television media the labor unions the schools the courts and the legislative halls of america welch was an influential figure and he described president eisenhower as quote a dedicated conscious agent of the communist conspiracy he said he knew this based on an accumulation of detailed evidence so extensive and so palpable that it seems to put this conviction beyond any reasonable doubt hofstadter describes how the paranoid style went from a focus on foreign plots to overthrow america to an obsession with domestic plots tobin smith who worked at fox news and wrote a book about his time there wrote that an executive at fox told him look have you read richard hofstadter's book the paranoid style in american politics if you haven't i'll lend you my copy everyone in the opinion broadcast team at fox news has read it and historian robert toplin has written that hofstadter associated that mentality with a manichaean and apocalyptic mode of thought he noticed that right-wing spokesman applied the methods and messages of evangelical revivalists to u.s politics agitated partisans on the right talked about epic clashes between good and evil and they recommended extraordinary measures to resist liberalism the american way of life was at stake they argued compromise was unsatisfactory the situation required militancy nothing but complete victory would do it's almost like fox news picked up hofstadter's essays and mistook it for an instruction manual on how to run a political television network carlson's paranoid style manifests in many ways let's look at a handful [Music] changing demographics and as we've seen the threat of immigration to legacy america is a favorite topic of tucker's but his references to the great replacement theory adds that conspiratorial spin the theory came from the french novelist renault camus 2011 le grand replacement kamu believed that non-whites muslims in particular immigrating to europe were colonizers who were part of a slow grand plan to replace the indigenous population the great replacement has been adopted by anti-immigration politicians across europe marine le pen in france has cited it and gert wilders in the netherlands has tweeted about it as the new york times found carlson raised the idea that democrats wanted to use immigration to change the demographics of the country in over 400 episodes of his show the key is the conspiracy that the politicians are in concert with goals that are secretive a plan a specific intention of furthering their own power by shady means using language like invasion also suggests that the country is under attack and so needs defending carlson has defended billboards in california that read stop the invasion secure our borders he said it's an invasion i don't know what's wrong with saying so and other fox anchors referred to it as an invasion dozens of times the great replacement theory has been cited by the new zealand christchurch terrorist who killed 51 in a mosque in 2019 and by the shooter in el paso texas who targeted latinos and killed 23 people in the same year and by the buffalo attack in may 2022 in which 10 were killed all the killers cited their motivation being a defense of the native population being replaced demographic changes are of course real but the emphasis is on conspiracy that it's part of an elite plan to keep down wages to keep housekeepers cheaper to increase the number of votes for your political party or for muslims to turn europe into a colony governed by sharia law it's these things that make this a particularly dangerous talking point while defending the great replacement theory on the one hand carlson then pushes the idea that white supremacy is exaggerated by the mainstream media on the other hand he's gone as far as to call white supremacy a hoax he writes in his book that if you can convince voters that white supremacy in the heartland is the real problem it's possible that they may ignore that you and your family live in a rarefied white enclave and are far richer now than you were 10 years ago carlson has also staked fears of minority white farmers in south africa being targeted to be wiped out by the black majority carlson told viewers that the south african government had quote just passed a law allowing it to seize their farms without any compensation based purely on their ethnicity he said that it's in some sense an intentional campaign to crush a racial minority within your country brian jones the most senior black presenter at fox news told fox news viewers on his own show that carlson was wrong about every detail yes the anc in south africa was debating a bill that meant land could be hypothetically expropriated but it wasn't based on ethnicity and it hadn't even been passed it's based on many factors like whether the land sat empty whether it was used purely for speculative use or whether the owner had left the country most organizations would not let this simple factual error get anywhere near being on air most recently carlson has been pushing the narrative that the storming of the capital on january 6 by trump supporters was an fbi false flag operation instigated by undercover fbi agents and leftists to discredit the trump movement and purge trump voters he's called it the fed surrection and it's the subject of an outlandish three-part documentary called patriot purge that's based on hearsay wild speculation and hysterics the documentary claims that left-wing instigators were changing into trump clothes and goading members of the crowd to go to the capital he said on his show that two unindicted co-conspirators were almost certainly working for the fbi why because they hadn't been charged and as the washington post has pointed out there are several reasons someone might not be charged they might have cooperated with the fbi they might be treated with leniency for several reasons or the charges are based on evidence that's just not worth pursuing to jump straight to conspiracy is of course a wildly preposterous and irrational leap of the paranoid imagination and along with some people were getting changed that's about the extent of the evidence in a three-part documentary hofstadter wrote that what distinguishes the paranoid style is not then the absence of verifiable facts though it's occasionally true that in his extravagant passion for facts the paranoid occasionally manufactures them but rather the curious leap in imagination that is always made at some critical point in the recital of events politifacts looked at court documents and found clear evidence that the defendants were overwhelmingly trump supporters of course the idea that a storming of a government building is something that's been orchestrated by the government itself is a really serious claim for a mainstream news organization to make and would surely require some serious evidence or at least that used to be the case carlson also pushed the idea that elites have used fear and panic of climate change to get what they want and it's no surprise that he's promoted the website 4chan on air a site known for being a hotbed for conspiracy theories like pizzagate and q and on shutting down free speech is also part of a conspiracy he wrote in the book that if you're going to run a country for the benefit of a few it's dangerous to let people complain about it the only way to impose unpopular policies on a population is through fear and silence free speech is the enemy of authoritarian rule that's why the framers put it at the top of the bill of rights that's also why our ruling class seeks to crush it so let's look a little bit more at the mechanics of tucker's paranoid mind and ask the question why is he like this throughout the book there's a constant tension one that veers from attributing the reason for the elites misguided politics on them simply being wrong say and the reason being a malicious organized conspiracy to limit speech to increase their power to bring in cheap labor that they'll benefit from to discredit trump voters to replace the native population and to divert attention with identity politics why does he do this of course you can make many of these arguments although not all of them without appealing to conspiracy i can get on board when tucker says something like the main reason the press lost interest in holding the permanent government accountable is that they had more in common with its members than the rest of the country they share the same life experiences and cultural assumptions as the people they cover the people in power are the neighbors and former classmates of the members of the press on the most basic level the two groups have become indistinguishable but he takes things even further not only do they share interest but they're all colluding organizing against your interests a cabal in cahoots sinister shadowy evil pulling the strings and when it comes to crafting a powerful message the paranoid style does have its benefits hofstadter wrote that for the paranoid very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power he controls the press he directs the public mind through managed news he has unlimited funds he has a new secret for influencing the mind brainwashing he has a special technique for seduction the catholic confessional he is gaining a stranglehold on the educational system why has conspiracy been such a huge recurring theme in history why does carlson jump to it so quickly does he really believe it well the simplest answer is that it sells it attracts attention it mobilizes and it works as a political tactic fox is known for its assiduous study of its own ratings while traditional television ratings data looked at viewer numbers hour by hour then 15 minutes by 15 minutes fox started using ratings data that looked at viewing figures minute by minute one fox employee said that carlson studied them carefully they said he's going to double down on the white nationalism because the minutes by minutes show that the audience eats it up another employee told the new york times that fox wanted to focus on the grievance the stuff that would get people boiled up they're coming for you the blacks are coming for you the mexicans are coming for you the emotional core as the new york times puts it is white panic over the country's changing ethnic composition and being one of the most successful media publishers on facebook fox now has access to even more detailed analytics than ever another former fox political editor said that cable hosts looking for ratings and politicians in search of small dollar donations can see which stories and narratives are drawing the most intense reactions among addicted users online they continued that using social media is like a focus group for pure outrage as we saw in the last video on my in-depth exploration of how fox news grew into the powerhouse juggernaut that it is today and i'll leave a link to that in the comments or just subscribe and go back and whatever we found that the network presents the story in the most emotional language supported by melodramatic attention-grabbing graphics relying on our most destructive tendencies of our evolutionary inheritance our defense mechanisms our fear our survival our fight and flight and our tendency to focus on threats and dangers people become mobilized when the threat is powerful organized elitist the other hofstadter writes that for the paranoid nothing but complete victory will do since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable he must be totally eliminated if not from the world at least from the theater of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention he continues this enemy is clearly delineated he is a perfect model of malice a kind of a moral superman sinister ubiquitous powerful cruel sensual luxury loving the enemy makes crises starts runs on banks causes depressions manufactures disasters and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced i think the most disturbing part of carlson's book is the short two-page epilogue it's where he talks briefly about what he sees as solutions and even here it's difficult to discover exactly what policies he believes in though okay he'd clearly closed the borders but his critique of crony capitalism leads him to also admire the quote pure and old-fashioned economics of someone like elizabeth warren who supports increasing taxes on corporations and the wealthy but the most worrying part especially from a man who has been touted as a potential republican presidential candidate is his skepticism about democracy itself carlson has cozied up to and taken inspiration from so-called illiberal liberal authoritarians like hungary's victor orban and brazil's cher bolsonaro both critical of liberal positions on immigration and sexuality and gender rights and both should we say fast and loose with the rule of democratic law willing to subvert democratic norms to get their way in that two-page epilogue to ship of fools carlson talks about two paths out from the crisis he's diagnosed one is to quote attend to the population to care about them he says this solution is the simplest but this is it there's no real suggestions about what to do what policies to implement other than saying that massive inequality is bad the other to suspend democracy he says this solution is the quickest he says democracy is new and that hierarchy is the oldest system more normal and natural those are his words he writes that hierarchy is quote the story of all human history very few civilizations have operated in any other way people naturally sort themselves into hierarchies those who have power defend it from those who don't ruler's rule surfs obey it's a familiar system we know it works because it has for thousands of years the new ingredient what makes our current moment so unstable is democracy he continues that there are justifications for suspending democracy he says if your voters can't reach responsible conclusions you can't let them vote you don't give suffrage to irrational populations for the same reason you wouldn't give firearms to toddlers they're not ready for the responsibility the last sentence of tucker's book is we're all sufferers from history but the paranoid is a double sufferer since he is afflicted not only by the real world with the rest of us but by his fantasies as well and ironically so really tucker carlson's views are there on the page in black and white certain people shouldn't be able to vote they're irresponsible and the elites are conspiratorial they need purging from the system the swamp needs draining and democracy can be suspended to do that if needs be it's part of this reactionary idea that america isn't necessarily a democratic country it's just a republican one and if america is the most powerful country in the world and carlson is its most influential conservative and he has views like this does this make him one of the most dangerous men in the world or does that make me a sufferer of the paranoid mind thank you as always for watching and a huge thanks of course as always to my patreons without which this just wouldn't be possible so if you want to see scripts if you want to chat in the discord server if you want your name in the credits but most of all if you just want to help support make this content then click the link in the description below if not you can like you can share you can leave a comment all those things that help the algorithm thank you so much and i'll see you next time you

Channel: Then & Now

Views: 177,029

Keywords: tucker carlson, richard hofstadter, paranoid style, american politics, fox news, fedsurrection, qanon, the great replacement, tucker carlson tonight, fox news channel, fox and friend

Id: aYjn98SH5lo

Length: 50min 29sec (3029 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 15 2022